Typically a kiosk is a machine placed in a location for general, e.g. public, access of users or clients so that a service provider can provide a service to these users/clients. Typically, these services are "self-services" that are conducted by the client without the service provider providing an agent to offer specific help to the client. Therefore, the services tend to be repetitive, simple, and specific tasks like: 1. getting information, and/or 2. completing certain simple transactions (e.g., buying tickets, getting cash, see the department store's floor map, etc.).
Tasks to be conducted need to be pre-programmed and predetermined and have to be self service. Therefore the kiosk designs are inflexible and offer no help customized to a specific user.
Generally these transactions involve the use of some device(s), e.g., one or more monitors, a card reader, a ticket printer, a laser printer, a cash dispenser, etc. These devices are typically dedicated to the predefined tasks inflexibly designed in the kiosk and therefore the devices have no other usage.
Advantages of kiosks are that they are convenient and reliable. Kiosks do not require full time human operators to perform their tasks and therefore, save operating costs and increase productivity.
Some kiosks in the prior art are connected by a network, e.g., bank ATM machines, airline ticket machines, etc. There are also stand alone kiosks such as information kiosk in shopping malls.
The prior art includes kiosks with video conferencing for banking applications to try to create a connection between the bank agent and the user/client. This is done by simply adding a video conferencing system to a traditional type of kiosk.
The prior art also has combined kiosks with the internet. This kiosk has a browser which displays the HTML pages on the screen of the kiosk. The screen displayed on the kiosk is controlled by the hyperlinks selected by the user. These kiosks are suitable for information access where the client/user can browse through the information provided by selecting "soft" buttons that invoke a hyperlink. These kiosks can also be used for certain personal communications like e-mail. In these systems, the screens are usually specially designed to present a user interface (e.g., having navigation buttons, etc.) and the kiosk further acts as a filter to limit the URLs the client can traverse so that only HTML pages (URLs) defined by the kiosk builder are accessible.